There is no alternative to prepare a good wicket: Mashrafe

BSS, Dhaka :
The Bangladesh batters showed some promising signs to learn the art of T20 cricket as it was evidenced in their performance in the ongoing Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) T20 tournament.
The reason behind their good performance is obviously the pitch which gave them the freedom to play their shots unlike the previous editions when on most of the occasion, 150 became the winning total. This time, even a total of 200 is not safe.
“There is no alternative to prepare a good wicket, if you want to produce good batters and bowlers for the T20 cricket,” Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, the former national captain who is now leading Sylhet Strikers in this BPL said.
“We found some of the batters hitting the ball clean and had the ability to score runs at 150 plus strike rate. In domestic cricket, we didn’t see it. This itself proves if you give them a good wicket, they can prepare them as ideal T20 batters. At the same time, the bowlers tried to do well by containing the batters when they were in aggressive mood. This will give the bowlers also an opportunity to learn how to curb the aggression of the batters.”
The problem is apart from Shakib Al Hasan, Afif Hossain and Litton Das, the three best players of the country for the T20 format, others couldn’t do it at consistent basis. Shakib had already 347 runs in 10 matches, averaging almost 50 and with a strike rate of 184. Litton Das though looked off-coloured in first three matches, slowly found his mojo and had amassed so far 236 runs at a strike rate of 136. Afif Hossain had strike rate of 100 and almost 47 average for his 328 runs.